Cherophobia- the fear of being happy
Day 243 / 365
For the longest time, the main goal of all humanity has been the pursuit of happiness. I myself would have read about 4–5 books about happiness this year alone. When everyone’s trying to be happy, it seems strange if someone tries to avoid happiness. But it is the reality of some people, because of a psychological phenomenon known as Cherophobia.
Cherophobia is derived from the Greek word “Chairo” which means “to rejoice”. It basically means a situation where someone has a tendency to fear happiness.
Why would someone afraid to be happy? There are several reasons for this. The most common one is that people get so used to things getting worse in their life they don’t believe they’ll get to be happy. Any effort made to try to be happy would only end in disappointment, according to them. So they just stay away from it.
These people might not be sad all the time. They would simply avoid activities that have the potential of making them happy. These might include rejecting a good job opportunity, passing on a trip with friends and so on.
This Reddit comment does a good job of defining this.
When I was a kid everytime something good happened to me I was like “ok I’m happy now but now I’m depressed because I know after something good happens something bad happens”.